"Go," he managed. He swatted at the air. The next sound that came from him was a roar.
"No," Chiun said simply, over the roar. "I will not run from you. You must turn from me and from the creature that inhabits you."
Remo moved closer, fighting himself every inch, but unable to stop. Froth bubbled from his mouth. The pupils of his eyes were tinged with red.
The eyes again met Chiun's, closer now, almost within reach.
"You are a Master of Sinanju," Chiun said. "Fight this thing with your mind. Your mind must know that you are master of your body. Fight it."
Remo rolled onto his side to stop his forward motion toward Chiun. He clutched himself in torment. "Can't fight," he managed to gasp.
"Then kill me, Remo," Chiun said. He spread his arms and lifted his neck. "I wait."
Remo rolled back onto his knees, then lunged at Chiun. The old man made no move to step out of his way.
You are a Master of Sinanju.
The words echoed somewhere deep inside him. And in the deepest spot of himself, he knew that he was a man, not some laboratory experiment with no will. He was a man, and more than a man, for Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, had taught him to be more, to see the wind and taste the air and move with the vibrations of the universe. Chiun had trained Remo to be a Master, and a Master did not run, not even from himself.
With a colossal effort of will, Remo swerved from his path. He had come so close to the old man that the silk of Chiun's kimono brushed his bare arm. Tears streamed down his cheeks as the part of him that was Rerno struggled and clawed and fought with the beast that surrounded him. Shrieking, he threw himself on a boulder and wrapped his arms around it.
"I ... will ... not ... kill ... Chiun," he groaned, squeezing the rock with every particle of his strength. He felt the lifeless mass in his arms warm, then tremble. Then, with an outrush of air, expelling the poison from his lungs with a final, terrible effort, he clutched the boulder with his convulsive bleeding hands and pressed himself against it one last time.
The rock snapped, exploding in a spray. Pebbles and sand shot high into the air over him.
When the dust had settled, Remo stood. Like a man.
Chiun did not speak. His head nodded once in acknowledgment and it was enough.
Remo ran across the clearing. Perriweather's laugh stopped short and Remo heard the metal protest as the jeep was forced into gear and started to drive away.
Remo ran, feeling the perfect synchronization of his body as it responded to the subtle commands of his mind.
The jeep puttered ahead of him at a distance, moving easily over the dirt road.
And then it stopped.
Perriweather pressed down on the gas pedal. The wheels whirred and spun but the vehicle did not move. As Perriweather turned and saw Remo's hand holding the back of the vehicle, his jaw dropped open. He tried to speak.
"Fly got your tongue?" Remo said and then the jeep's rear end was rising into the air, and then it spun over and plummeted off the side of the road, down a hill, turning in the air, bursting into flames.
It stopped, flaming, as it crashed into an outcropping of rock.
"That's the biz, sweetheart," Remo said coldly. He felt Chiun standing alongside him.
"He is dead?" Chiun said.
"He should already be in fly heaven," Remo said. They watched the flames for a moment; and then Remo felt Chiun's body next to his tense and stiffen. Remo himself groaned as he saw what had captured Chiun's attention.
A small swirl of insects rose in the air from the burning jeep. In the harsh sunlight, their wings glinted a blood red.
"Oh, no," Remo said. "There's more. And they've escaped." He looked at Chiun. "What can we do?"
"We can stand here," Chiun said. "They will find us."
"And then what? Let ourselves get eaten up by flies?"
"How little you understand about things," Chiun said.
The red-winged flies were blown high into the air on the rising gusts of superheated air from the burning jeep. Then they seemed to see Remo and Chiun because they flew toward them.
"What should we do, Little Father?" Remo asked.
"Stand here to attract them. But do not let them bite you."
The flies, perhaps a dozen of them, flew in lazy circles around the two men. Occasionally one would dip as if to land but a sudden movement of Remo and Chiun's bodies frightened them back into the air.
"This is great until we get tired of waving at bugs," Remo said.
"Not much longer," Chiun said. "Look at the circles they are making."
Remo glanced upward. The hovering circles were becoming more erratic. The sound of the flies had changed too; it was uneven and too loud.
Then one by one the flies buzzed frantically, dove, struggled for a moment in the air, then dove again. They fell on the ground, around the two men, each twitching for a moment, before stopping as if frozen. "They're dead," Remo said in wonderment.
Chiun had plucked up a leaf and was folding it into an origami box. Inside he put the bodies of the dead flies.
"For Smith," he explained.
"Why'd they die?" Remo said.
"It was air," Chiun said. "They were bred to live in poison but they lost their ability to live for long in the air we breathe. It was why that fly died in the laboratory. And why that fly died after biting that poor fat white friend of Smith's." He put the leaf box into a fold of his robe.
"Then we weren't even needed," Remo said. "These monsters would have died by themselves."
"We were needed," Chiun said. He nodded toward the smoldering jeep holding Perriweather's body. "For the other monsters."
Chapter 22
A week later, Smith arrived at their hotel room at the New jersey shore.
"Chiun was right," Smith said without preamble. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "The flies could not live in ordinary air. They lived in Perriweather's lab because the air was so purified and they were mutated to live in poison. But ordinary killed them."
"Ordinary kills a lot of things," Chiun said. "Great teachers are killed by ordinary, or less than ordinary, pupils."
His statement sounded, to Smith, like some sort of private argument between the two men so he just cleared his throat, then pulled a note from his jacket pocket and handed it to Remo.